


If It's The Last Thing I Do

by jonesyslug



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: ACTUALLY I wrote this because, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, nevermind I'll take it to the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 23:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20665487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonesyslug/pseuds/jonesyslug
Summary: Shortly after arriving in Derry, Eddie Kaspbrak hears a knock on his door, and the the strange things that have been flying around his mind since he heard Mike Hanlon's voice over the phone finally swarm.





	If It's The Last Thing I Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Randy Spagandy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Randy+Spagandy).

> Okay please forgive me for this being sloppy, I wrote it because I was telling it to myself as a story as I fell asleep and I didn't want to use up all my words on a dry run that I'd forget when I woke up. The appearance of the characters and the setting is based off of It Chapter 2, but I took a lot of influence from the book and even the miniseries for characterization. I Can't Believe It's Not Angst! 
> 
> Also, random thought, but this came out almost entirely from Eddie's POV which is a surprise to me, but nevertheless was very nice to write.
> 
> Oct. 1 2019: I added rich text breaks instead of just dashes, you're welcome

There was a soft knock at Eddie's door, and the hinges whined as it opened slightly. Just enough for someone to slip in like a thief in the night. But thieves don't knock. Eddie was sorting his pills on the dresser, and his hands came to a halt. He turned around, and there was someone lanky in front of him, with a mop of dark hair and huge glasses, hand raised in an unsure wave. 

"Richie?" Some set of syllables bubbled out of his throat before he could register them, and it must not have been the nonsense he thought it was, because it was met with a wide grin, and a "Hi, Eds." 

"I told you not to call me that." He snapped. And then he settled back against the dresser, shocked at his tone. A rude familiarity reserved for… well, Myra, usually. He blinked and the man before him flashed away, a familiar boy in his place, same huge glasses, same crooked grin, but he didn't look so tired. He didn't look so spent. He looked cheerful, and on the horns of saying something that Eddie would definitely immediately object to, and then, like a flower in a nature documentary, growing in fast forward, he sprang back up into the man he was today. 

Richie. That's what Eddie had said. Richie Tozier. He'd seen him on late night TV. Richie Tozier whom Myra hated because of his self proclaimed trashmouth, that Richie Tozier. His friend, Richie Tozier. 

"Do you-" Richie started, but Eddie couldn't hear him. In his mind someone was snapping together pieces of a puzzle at the speed of light, moving too fast for him to ever see what the picture was. He was dizzy. He grabbed his inhaler off the dresser and took a long pull. 

"Woah, woah-" Richie said, sounding concerned as he stepped closer. Eddie had gone all pale in the face. Richie was worried he would fall, so he put his hands on his shoulders and held him up. 

Eddie grabbed him into a hug and started laughing, in spite of himself. 

"Richie!" He laughed as he slapped him on the back. 

A long, relieved sigh left Richie and ghosted over Eddie's neck. Eddie could feel the tension in Richie's shoulders ease a little. Something was wrong. What was wrong? He didn't remember yet. 

"I was starting to think you didn't remember me, Eddie Spaghetti." Richie said, as he pulled back. Eddie groaned at the nickname, much worse than _ Eds_. 

"I'm starting to wish I hadn't." Eddie said, surprised again at how rude he sounded. But Richie didn't flounder. He laughed warmly. 

"Jesus, you're still a huge bitch?" He asked, gleefully. Eddie rolled his eyes. 

"You're still a huge pain in the ass, why should I have changed?" He asked, crossing his arms. 

They stared at each other for a moment and Richie burst out laughing. "Still quick like a wabbit, eh, Eddie Boy?" Richie asked in an Elmer Fudd voice. 

Eddie's first impression of it was that it had been better when they were kids. It sounded a little forced, a little scared, now. Something was wrong. What couldn't he remember? He let his hands drop to his sides and picked his inhaler up off the dresser again, just to hold it. A nervous tick or something, he thought.

There was a flash of silver against Richie's thick lenses and his eyes bulged behind them. The wind knocked out of him like he'd been slammed in the gut with a sledgehammer. 

"Y-you got married?" Richie asked, sounding very surprised. Not the mocking sort of surprise Eddie expected. There was something so genuine in it and Eddie couldn't place what it was. Or, he didn't want to? 

_ Shut up, that's not it- _

He hid his hand behind his back, nervously, so Richie would stop gaping at the ring. 

"Yeah, I did." Eddie said, firmly. Like he was standing up to a bully. But Richie was the one who looked like- _ Something is wrong here, Eddie Kaspbrak, why can't you remember what's- _

"Congratulations!" Richie blurted out, dazed. Unaware of how dumb he looked forcing a smile down towards Eddie. 

"Thanks." 

Richie stood, rocking slightly from foot to foot, and his eyes started to dart around. He crossed his arms like he was bracing himself against the cold. Eddie watched him as his eyes went to the ceiling, to the corners, down to the floor, over to the bed, once, twice, over Eddie, then back to the ceiling. He puffed his cheeks out, then let out a long exhale. 

"I guess I should let you unpack." He said, finally. But Eddie didn't want him to leave. Eddie wanted to remember. 

"Wait-" Eddie said. But Richie hadn't moved yet. Eddie took a few steps towards him. He was acutely aware of the ring on his finger. It felt heavy and wrong and he felt- guilty. _ Why are you doing this to Myra? Why would you hurt Myra like this? _But what was he doing that would hurt Myra? Was he thinking about doing something that would hurt Myra? Or was it- something in the past. Something he had already done that would make Myra upset? What was it. 

"Richie, do you remember...me?" 

Richie nodded slowly. "I never forgot about you, Eddie." He swallowed hard. "Fucking Christ, I had to ask Bill his last name three times already but I never forgot you." 

The divine hands rifling through Eddie's mind and snapping things together finally stopped their fluttering about. They let him see the picture they had made. 

* * *

It was the last day of school, and Richie was walking Eddie home. It wasn't unusual, but it was a strange ritual in Eddie's opinion, since Richie lived the opposite way. Eddie assumed it was two fold: 1) Richie could look out for him, should worse come to worst, should anything about the long unspoken horrors they shared rear its ugly head again. And 2) much less lovely, so Richie could pester Eddie as much as possible before the day was out. 

Richie had been oddly quiet today, which was to say, he was only talking about as often and as loudly as a normal person would. Eddie had thought that when this day came, he'd be relieved, but the reality of it shocked him. Something was wrong. 

Richie slowed his pace as Eddie's house came into view, then halted entirely. 

"What?" Eddie asked, expecting this to be a big set up for another Classic Richie about his mother. But Richie just looked at him. 

"I'm moving." He said, lowly. "My dad got a job in Nebraska." 

Eddie stared for a minute, then his shock melted into frustration, and he pushed Richie in the shoulder, _ hard. _

"Don't wind me up like that, dick head!" Eddie said with a tense laugh. 

Richie rolled his eyes and sighed. "It's not a wind up. Can you just take me seriously for once?" He asked, sounding hurt. 

"Y-yeah." Eddie replied, breathlessly. He'd never seen Richie like this. 

"I'm moving. Real soon." He swallowed thickly. They both knew what that meant. The same thing would happen that happened when everyone else moved away. They'd stop calling, stop writing, stop...existing? 

Eddie blinked away hot tears. "Beep, beep, Richie." He said, firmly. "This isn't funny."

Eddie's mind was flooding with panic. Everyone was leaving. Everyone was gone. If Richie left, that was just another splinter off the thinning branch. Lucky Seven. The Loser's Club. His childhood. All fading into the ether. With Richie gone, hell, they wouldn't even be the Three Musketeers, the Three Stooges, the three...anything. It would just be him and Mike, and there was no love lost there, still plenty of fun to be had, lots of things to do. But they wouldn't laugh as often. And they'd have to deal with the growing pains of another phantom limb. Another kid who might as well have been on a milk carton for all they were going to hear from him. 

"You can't." Eddie heard himself wheeze. 

Richie took his glasses off. He polished them on his shirt and kept his face intently downward, so Eddie wouldn't see him cry. Fucking fifteen years old and he was crying about moving like some… some stupid little _ kid. _

He wiped his arm over his eyes swiftly and pushed his glasses back onto his face. 

"I don't want to. But I don't-" he couldn't say anything else. He was frozen. 

There was only one thing on his mind, just one thing and it had been there all day. Frankly, longer, but it lived with his other thoughts. Today it was all consuming. Today it was eating through him like a parasite. 

Richie faced Eddie squarely. 

"Eddie, I'm going to kiss you now." He declared, his brain officially blown out the back of his skull and sliding across the street, far away from him. From consequences. 

Eddie stared at him. 

"You what?" 

Richie took in a shaky breath. He didn't repeat himself. Instead, he took a step forward, and he was face to face with Eddie, their noses almost touching. 

"I swear to God, Richie, if this is a joke-" Eddie said, his voice wavering with anger and- and so many other things that he couldn't put them all together. "If this is a joke and you pull away and call me a fairy or a fag or something like that I'll _ never _forgive you." 

Richie didn't respond. He put his hand on the side of Eddie's face, like Bev had done with Bill. Like people did in movies. His heart was pounding so fast he could swear it had flopped out onto the pavement between them. He waited half a second for Eddie to pull away, but he didn't. So Richie, with his lips pulled tight, placed a kiss against Eddie's slack jawed mouth. Eddie's jaw tightened on contact, and there they were. Their lips were pressed together and it felt clumsy and strange and... exhilarating. 

Richie pulled back quickly and popped his lips with a tiny smack. 

_ I did it. _And everything came rushing back. His heart coiled back into his chest like a retractable iron cord. His brain slammed itself angrily back into place and started screaming. 

_ What the fuck are you doing, Richie? What the fuck did you just do? Beep beep, you fucking- _

Before Eddie could say anything, before he could even _ move _, Richie pushed himself back and yelled. "Be seeing ya, Eds!" 

Eddie's eyes weren't even all the way open by the time Richie had turned, headed away. Eddie had never seen him run so fast. Not from Henry Bowers, not from Officer Nell, not even from Pennywise. 

Eddie stood there, and it settled into his chest that it might be the last time he ever saw Richie. And how much he loved Richie. 

Eddie didn't know how long he'd been standing there, Richie had disappeared into the horizon _ years ago _it seemed, when he heard a shrill voice call out, "Eddie! Eddie Kaspbrak what on Earth are you doing?" 

His heart sank into his stomach. "Mom-" 

Had she seen? Did she know? She was glaring at him. He was terrified. What would she say? What would she do? What was going to happen? He'd heard her say all sorts of things, bad things, about guys who kissed other guys, how they all got diseases, how they- 

"Eddie, stop standing in the street like that! It's dangerous!" She hollered, ushering him in. 

Relief swept over him but he was left in a cold sweat as he went into the house as quickly as he could without his mother scolding him for being reckless. 

Soon the door was shut behind him and he was in the strange, literal cold comfort of their home. Cold like a hospital. It always was. His mother had a "perfect system" with the temperature in their house and insisted that- no matter what temperature she set the A/C to, it was the optimal temperature to stop germs from spreading around willy nilly. 

"Mommy, I- I don't feel very well." He said, thinly. He couldn't be in the same room with her right now. He needed to think. And if they were in the same room while he thought, he might think loud enough for her to hear him, and she would be disappointed and infuriated and she'd be calling doctors and making appointments to make sure he hadn't _ contracted _anything, because she never liked that Tozier boy to begin with, and- 

"You look pale, Eddie. Go lay down, I'll bring you something in a minute, and a nice, cold glass of water? Okay? Go on." 

She nearly shoved him towards his room before heading to the kitchen frantically. 

Eddie marched into his room like a zombie, and crawled slowly onto his bed. He let his arms hang off either side and stared at the ceiling. He didn't even notice how long he'd gone without touching his inhaler. He was just frozen. Trying to figure out what the punchline was. In the midst of it he decided he didn't have to tell Mike, if he didn't want to. He didn't have to tell anyone. Maybe, even, with the way Richie ran away- he shouldn't. Because it wasn't just his to tell. He heard his mother coming down the hall and quickly kicked his sneakers off, and curled up, pretending to sleep. He couldn't look at her. Not now. Not yet. 

A few streets over, Richie had finally run over the threshold of his home, screen door slamming behind him. His parents weren't home, but his sister yelled something at him about running in the house. He bolted past piles of boxes and up the stairs, only vaguely aware that he was hurling some vulgar insult at her as he sped towards his room. 

The next day, when Eddie rode his bike down the hill, the Tozier house stood tall and empty, the FOR SALE sign in the yard swinging gently in the breeze. All of the sudden he hated the absence of the usually grating sounds of Tozier family life. Bustling and yelling like they were at a goddamn train station, all stepping over and around each other, looking for missing books and keys and papers as they got ready for their days. 

Eddie wiped a tear off his face like he was swatting at a fly, and pedaled away, down the street, towards the farms. Towards Mike Hanlon. Somewhere safe. 

* * *

"Oh, Richie." Eddie said, with a sharp inhale. The velocity and the detail of the memory left him in a daze, the fucking _ reality _of it, like it had just happened. He had just lived through it again, in an instant, and Richie was standing over him. Watching him carefully. 

Eddie recognized that look. 

He took a step forward, waiting. For a flinch, for a reaction. To be pushed away. 

Richie put his hand on Eddie's face- just like people did in the movies- and rubbed his thumb over his cheekbone. Eddie put his hand on top of Richie's and squeezed. He put the other hand square against Richie's chest, and Richie's breath halted. Richie put his other hand on the back of Eddie's neck, and his breathing started up again, wildly, like a motor trying to turn over. 

Eddie pressed his face up, until his lips were touching Richie's, and this time it was softer. It was nicer. They actually knew how to kiss now. Richie's heartbeat steadied. This was what he was supposed to do. His whole life, this had been what he was supposed to do. He wasn't very practiced in the way of kissing, but kissing Eddie just felt so right, so perfect. Eddie finally pulled away for a breath, unsurprisingly, from his inhaler. 

"Richie Tozier, I remember you." He said, with a warm feeling in his chest. Panic was nipping at his heels, his brain was screaming out, _ Myra! Myra! Why would you hurt Myra? _

But he didn't have to tell Myra. He didn't have to tell anyone. Just as surely as they had all come together the first time, as kids, just as surely as they were all here again now, _ this _was supposed to happen. And Eddie's mind cleared. He smiled up at Richie, who hadn't taken his hands or his eyes off him. 

"I missed you, Trashmouth." 

Richie smirked. 

"You _ kissed _my trashmouth." 

Eddie shoved at him, jokingly. "Don't be so _ fucking _ vulgar." He hissed. 

Richie burst out laughing and soon they were both in tears, holding their aching ribs as they wheezed out more laughter than either of them had managed in decades. 

Richie's laughter slowed and he wiped at his eyes. He took Eddie's left hand and kissed his wedding ring. It was a bizarre, solemn promise in the middle of Eddie's dying, awkward giggles. 

"I have some unpacking to do, Mr. Kaspbrak. I'll see you at dinner." 

Eddie got one last good look at Richie's big, brown eyes, honey heavy in the haze of the setting sun and the blush of deja vu intimacy on his cheeks. 

Richie tapped the side of his nose and winked. Then gave Eddie a sad sort of smile as he backed out the door. Eddie knew what it meant. 

It meant they didn't have to tell anyone. It meant they didn't have to talk about it. It meant that the moment itself, if it was the last thing Richie Tozier ever did, was all that mattered. 

**Author's Note:**

> Stephen King, if you come at me because these are your characters so help me God, I will unleash a fury upon you which you could never concieve of, not even in your wildest, most coked up dreams, not even in the furthest recess of the darkest corner of your fucked up little mind. There will be nothing left of you and I will become a fucking god and when the dust settles, everyone will know my power. My gay power. 
> 
> Also no one get onto me for Eddie cheating on his wife. If Bill and Beverly are allowed to have sex with each other, in canon, while both of them are married, THEN RICHIE AND EDDIE CAN FUCKING KISS, OKAY? 
> 
> Oh holy night I need to fucking sleep...


End file.
